Fire and Ice
In the Village Hidden in the Mist, there live a rather aloof and seemingly disinterested young woman who found herself spending her free time arranging ice flowers and going out with her teenage daugher... wait... Teenage daughter!?! This was Aohime, who is now a 38 years old mother of an acclaimed 17-year-old kunoichi named Tsumihime Hanzai. Tsumi was a special girl who was raised with both a surprising amount of care from her mother, and a number of personal maids. She was especially unique due to who her father is, whose whereabouts were but a mystery to the two women. Should I? Kusanagi thought to himself. He was back in Kirigakure, years after meeting and...embracing Aohime. He stood by her front door, glaring at the humongous mansion which laid before him. Guards stood before him, eyeing him suspiciously. "Kinda looks like Tsumihime..." one of them muttered. Kusanagi heard this, and felt a pang of regret. Is that our daughter's name? he wondered to himself. He walked forward, the guard beginning to block the entrance. Kusanagi, keeping a poker face kept walking, and quickly disarmed the guards, knocking them to the ground, all with his bare hands. The guards now disoriented, Kusanagi quickly jumped over the gate, scaling the building before jumping into an open window. Busying herself with a sewing project, Aohime wasn't all too attentive with what was happening around her, so it took only the loudest of noises to steer her focus away from her current project. "What seems to be the problem out there...?" the seemingly youthful Hanzai matron inquired with her eerie eyes glancing to the side. "Madame, there seems to be some man who is quickly making his way hear, he's disarmed some of us and has succeeded to elude capture so far. I fear that you are in danger and the we are to leave immediately!" Putting her patchwork down, Aohime simply stood up in a relaxed and casual manner and took a leisurely walk towards the front door. "Did you happen to see this slippery assailant of yours?" The bald man in a suit and sunglasses paused for a moment, then stated, "Yes, he appears to be a young man with blonde hair with a sword at his waist, why?" At the very moment that the guard voiced his curiosity, the woman was already long gone, presumably to meet this intruder. More guards came to try and defeat Kusanagi. He quickly jumped over them, hitting their kneecaps to disarm them and incapacitate them. Kusanagi looked around the mansion, looking for his...daughter. This would be the first of his children that he would actually meet. For the first time in his life, Kusanagi felt nervousness and fear. Sheltering those emotions, he used his sensory abilities to detect a life form with portions of his chakra. And he found one. The room to his left, contained a female lifeform, approximately eighteen years of age. My daughter... Kusanagi thought to himself, the thought bizzare in his mind. He opened the door, and saw a girl with black hair, and red eyes. She wore a kimono and had an ice blade in hand. "Hello," Kusanagi began. "My name is Kusanagi. I'm your father." Tsumihime had a white towel on her shoulders and around her neck like a stole, using one end to wipe the sweat that beaded on her pale smooth skin like twinkling crystals. Usually she wouldn't have a single reason to exert herself in such a way unless if it were on a serious mission. There was a certain girl on her current team that she just couldn't please, no matter what she did the girl she sought to have all to herself just wouldn't let up the "hard-to-get" routine. Then again, Tsumi happened to be the daughter of two powerful individuals who just wouldn't take no for an answer. Suddenly, she heard a man approach, and before she could so much as a question, the man spouted out a claim that she was her 'father'. Truth be told, the somewhat shocked young woman dropped her ice sword to the ground upon hearing this declaration. He saw her drop the sword, and he couldn't help but let a smirk appear on his face. "You look just like your mother...but most of your good looks obviously come from me." Kusanagi said, beginning to relax. He stood against the wall, observing her. He nodded towards the sword. "Your blade? So you inherited your mothers bloodline." Kusanagi took a step forward, picking up the blade, he shook his head. "How do you fight with such poorly made sword? I should get you one." he said. Despite the confidence which Kusanagi was talking with, he was secretly afraid. Nervous. How would his daughter react to his sudden return? Would she hate him? Would she embrace him? All these questions ran through Kusanagi's mind as he turned his head to his daughter, locking his eyes with hers. It was then that he heard a petite figures footsteps. Kusanagi sighed as he heard the gasp of someone he had long missed. He turned towards her, having the audacity to grin "Hey there, Aohime. Miss me?" The matron and sole head of the Hanzai house arrived with a slight shortness of breath, her coming heralded by the sound of her panting. At this point, the confused daughter took this time as an opportunity to voice her bewilderment in the form of a question, "Mother, who is this man? Why is he in our house? And why is he calling himself my father?" After gathering herself and regaining her composure, she looked to her child with a hint of sympathy in her dark eyes, only to turn an exceptionally frosty gaze at Kusanagi, "That is because, dearest daughter, the man that we happen to have in our company is indeed your foolish, irresponsible, roguish, self-centered swine of a father..." Tsumihime's eyes widened at the confirmation that was uttered from the very lips of her mother, a woman she has lived with long enough to know that she almost never lies. This was the exception. "You mean to say this man is seriously my father? The time traveler who gallivants through time and space to do as he pleases and almost never answers for it?" The Hanzai heiress gave a glare towards Kusanagi, whom she strode to and closed the distance between them. Those serious eyes that never left the visage of the man who fathered her then softened greatly and welled up with tears. "DADDY!" was all the young girl said as she tightly hugged her father and buried her face in his chest bawling. With a sigh, Aohime gave a small smile, walking up to hug both her daughter and the one person who made her frozen heart feel like a blazing furnace. "Welcome back, dearest husband..." Kusanagi sighed as Aohime ranted off his negative traits. He turned towards his daughter to see tears welling up in her eyes. Kusanagi was confused. Why is she crying? he wondered. His train of thought was cut short as she ran up to him, hugging him tightly. He was even more confused when Aohime hugged him as well. "I always thought you two would try to kill me. Oh well." Kusanagi said as the hug ceased. He flickered, before appearing elsewhere. "So this is your home, Aohime? It's nice. You guys were the first on my list to visit. I've got more of my kids to meet. Anyway, great to see you guys, I really should be going." "Where do you think you're going... father...?" Tsumihime inquired ominously, as she was somehow still attached to Kusanagi in a tight hug when he flickered from one place to another, "we have so much to catch up on that you simply must stay..." A strange yet oddly familiar energy was beginning to emanate from Tsumi which, while Kusa was stuck in his daughter's embrace, he wouldn't be able to escape to other points in time with his sword. Aohime walked leisurely towards her vagrant lover, eyes as dark and soulless as when the two first met, "Dearest husband, you weren't thinking of leaving us again... were you? After all... our precious daughter took more after you than even you realized..." "She takes after me?" Kusanagi asked, confused. "But she lives with you. She's never met me before." he finished. "I assure you, my poor handsome fool, that if you tried to leave us the same way you left me all those years ago, you will find it rather... impossible...", Aohime said, her eyes still as dark and foreboding while a small smile crept onto her face. Tsumihime sported a very similar expression as she looked up towards the face of her father, "We have much to catch up on, you and I..." the time-traveler's daughter giving a smile that looked more like a she-wolf bearing her fangs at an ensnared sheep. "Tsumi dear... do tell your father just what sort of 'gift' you were given for your sixteenth birthday..." Catching up? The way she's talking about it... Kusanagi began to wonder before turning his head towards his daughter. "What 'gift' do you have?" "Oh?" questioned Tsumihime in an almost playful manner, "what a silly question father, you should know by now just what sort of things your own child has... you've used it many times, including when you left my mother..." "You can time travel?" Kusanagi asked, bewildered. A bad habit of Tsumi's is when she stops whatever she's doing when it comes to someone being bewildered by her superior prowess and pedigree in order to monologue. "Why of course, father, I can even to any point in time I choose, whether be it my conception or the time fled from your duties like a dog after has done its business..." Momentarily letting go of Kusa, she then went on to say, "there's also that one trip I made just to test out my abilities... I was fooling around for quite a while with that Yakedo fellow..."